US federal agents illegally obtained evidence against a former Reuters journalist when they scoured his computer for documents that were not mentioned in the search warrant they were granted, the reporter’s attorney argued in court Wednesday.

Matthew Keys, 26, was charged in 2012 with conspiring with
hackers from Anonymous, providing them with a username and
password that allowed them access to the Los Angeles Times
website and subsequently change a headline. When federal agents
investigating Keys examined the computer in question they
accessed files Keys had sent about his own case to another
journalist who was at work on a book about the anonymous hacking
collective.

Keys’ attorney, Jay Leiderman, asked the US district court in
Sacramento to suppress any evidence the police obtained from that
computer.

“The warrant did not give the power to rummage through the
journalist’s files,” he said Wednesday, nothing “there
is no indication of why all this information needed to be
seized.”

How the prosecution plans to use the information investigators
obtained is unclear, however authorities said the search needed
to be conducted because files relevant to the investigation may
have been deleted by Keys. Attorneys cited child pornography
investigations, in which entire hard drives are often seized,
provide a precedent for this case.

According to the Guardian, Leiderman responded by saying that a
child porn example is irrelevant to this case and asserted that
Keys, being a journalist, would not destroy files that were part
of an ongoing story.

The Justice Department claims that Keys, dejected over being
fired from his job at KXTL Fox 40, a Tribune Company subsidiary,
gave his log-in information to hackers in an Anonymous chat room
and told them to “go f**k some shit up.” They then
infiltrated the site of the Los Angeles Times, another Tribune
company, and changed a headline from “Pressure builds in
House to Pass Tax-Cuts” to “Pressure Builds in House to
Elect CHIPPY 1337,” a reference to another hacker group.

Prosecutors explained that the plan was designed to “make
unauthorized changes to web sites that the Tribune Company used
to communicate news features to the public; and to damage
computer systems used by the Tribune Company.”

Leiderman said that Keys was acting as an embedded journalist
when the alleged criminal activity occurred in 2010. Keys faces
up to 25 years in prison and a $750,000 fine if convicted,
although prosecutors told the Associated Press last year that
Keys would likely be sentenced to between 10 and 27 months behind
bars because he has no criminal record. Keys has refused a plea
bargain.

“He met these people in chat rooms, they knew he was a
journalist and knew where he used to work,” Leiderman told
the Huffington Post, adding that the credentials Keys provided
were incapable of gaining access to the LA Times site.
“There’s an incongruity to all of this that we’re hoping to
get to the bottom of in the next couple months.”